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How Good's Dairy Podcast
How Good's Calving | Karen Fraser, The Calf Experts

How Good's Calving | Karen Fraser, The Calf Experts

How Good's Dairy vor 1 Monat

0:00

33:45

Podcast

How Good's Dairy

George Dodson and Conan Moynihan

Wirtschaft

Podcast aneignen

Calving is relentless. And the decisions that shape an animal's
entire life get made in the middle of it, thirty seconds at a
time.

Karen Fraser has reared calves through just about every version
of this job — from converting a Hawke's Bay potato farm to 1,500
cows in the early 2000s, to running young stock on Rakaia Island
and Woodstock Farms, to teaching people who'd never touched an
animal how to rear calves properly. These days she's one half of
The Calf Experts alongside ruminant nutritionist Stacey Cosnett,
and a technical specialist at Farmlands.

She sat down with George and Conan on George's farm to go through
calf rearing the way it actually happens at 5am, not the way it
looks in a manual.

We get into the five Qs of colostrum — including the one nobody
talks about, and why a frightened calf absorbs less of what you
just fed it. Whether to tube a calf or teach it to drink, a
question George and his dad have never agreed on. Why topping up
a water bucket with a garden hose is quietly teaching your calves
not to eat. Rumen development, and why you're really feeding two
animals at once. Ad lib feeding, and why the step-down needs 21
days rather than 14.

And the question we finished on: what's good calf rearing
actually worth in lifetime production?

00:00 How good's dairy?

00:47 Welcome — Karen Fraser

01:01 From potato growers to 1,500 cows

02:34 How The Calf Experts started

04:19 The five Qs of colostrum

06:56 Squeaky clean — and the Q nobody talks about

08:52 The first two feeds

09:34 Tube it, or teach it to drink?

12:06 Water: why a bucket is a problem

15:07 What skimming does to the grown cow

16:16 Rumen development — you're feeding two animals

18:54 Fibre, acetate and the 10% rule

20:13 Ad lib feeding, and the 21-day step-down

23:02 What George does on his farm

25:40 The best calf sheds Karen has seen

27:46 What's good calf rearing worth?

29:48 Takeaways

32:32 Where to find Karen

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